- What's up YouTube land, Mark Manson here.
If you've been on YouTube quite a bit,
you've probably come across these videos
where experts explain a particular
concept in five different levels.
So they start out explaining it for a child,
then they go to explain it for a teenager
and then explaining it for a college student
and explaining it for a grad student
and then explaining it for an expert.
I believe Wired started this.
Things that you you assume are kind
of simple topics or are simple concepts,
there's just kind of this infinite
amount of complexity underneath them.
So I wanted to try to do that today
simply for the concept of self. Yes, the self.
There's five layers of complexities
simply to our understanding of self.
So stick around because I think the last one
is going to blow your fucking mind.
(fast-paced rock music)
All right. So level one, explaining the concept of self
to a child. It's actually very simple.
Whatever you feel or control in your environment is a part
of you. So I can control my hand.
That is part of myself. If you can control your foot,
that means it's part of yourself.
If you can feel something that happens to you when it pushes
against your chest, that means your chest is part
of yourself. And your self is separate
from the rest of the things in the world,
because you can't control the chair
without touching it. You can't control
the light without pressing the switch.
So anything that you can't control
without touching it is not a part of yourself.
Does that make sense? God, what an idiot.
Level two. Explaining- - Dope.
- for a teenager. So by now you've grown up a little bit.
You've got some hair on your wuwu or your wiwi
and you probably are starting to understand
that your self isn't simply limited to your physical body.
There are certain abstract concepts that represent
yourself that are untouchable or intangible.
So the fact that you're compassionate
or you're a good friend, or you're good at biology
or that you're musically talented
these abstract concepts come to define you
the same way that you know, your height or your weight
or your physical appearance define you as well.
They're also kind of more socially based abstractions.
You know, I am born in Austin, Texas.
That is part of myself. I like video games.
That is part of who I am. I live in New York city.
These are all socially constructed identifiers
that determine "who" our identity is.
Once you discover these abstract points of self
they are a source of obsession.
They are something that you constantly worry about.
Do they think I'm smart? Do they think I'm nice?
And a good friend, maybe I was kind of a dick.
Maybe I'm not as smart as I thought
these thoughts start to consume us
around our teenage years, because so much
of our sense of wellbeing is based
on how others perceive ourselves, right?
And so in this sense, the self,
it's not purely physical, it's not abstract
but it's something that is socially negotiated
or tested based on how other people react
to us or how the world comes to see us.
I can think I'm smart but if every
single person I come across treats me like an idiot.
Then that puts a lot of stress
on me because it brings up the question
that perhaps I don't actually know myself.
Level three,- - Sup bro.
- explaining the concept of self to a college student.
So we discussed how there's this tension
between our self-definition and how the world
comes to see us and how this can drive a lot
of stress and anxiety in our lives.
We also have certain psychological defense
mechanisms that protect our sense of self.
So if I believe that I'm smart
but everybody treats me like a moron.
Then I will start telling myself stories to
protect my self definition. I will say,
"These people are the, I'm not the moron.
These people are all the morons."
Or if I see myself as a compassionate and kind friend
but my friends all treat me poorly
then I will tell myself stories of like,
well maybe I'm not compassionate enough.
Maybe I just need to be even kinder
because that's the type of person that I am.
This is Freud's definition of the ego.
The ego is basically our definition
of ourselves for ourselves. And then we tend
to protect that definition by either pushing
other people away or simply lying
to ourselves about what other people are saying.
The word ego has gotten a bad rap over the years, but it's
you know, we all need a little bit of healthy ego,
to some extent. A healthy ego means that you
know who you are that you are very comfortable
in the traits that you have and who
you are as a human being in the world.
And you're not afraid to stand up for it.
We all need a little bit of a healthy ego where
the ego becomes unhealthier becomes very
toxic is when our definition of ourselves
deviates quite a bit from reality.
If I start thinking that I'm a short trapeze artist
even though I've never been on a trapeze
that's not a very accurate self-definition based
on my actual experiences or what I do in the world.
But if I believe that strongly enough
I will start defending that with all sorts of lies
and coping mechanisms and emotional outbursts that caused me
to be dysfunctional in the world.
So what Freud accurately pointed out is that a lot
of emotional dysfunction in the world, and a lot
of people who, who struggle in their relationships
and struggled to get along with others, it's
because they have a poor definition of themselves
and they are simply protecting it from reality.
This was a very profound insight and it's kind
of why Freud is such a big deal.
And then he went off and talked about penises all the time.
So that's kind of why we make fun of him.
All right. Level four,- - Hmm.
- explaining the concept of self to a graduate student.
So the concept of self it's actually just
an arbitrary definition. Like anything else,
you know, it's like, I kind of have my definition
of what friendship is. You maybe have
a definition of what friendship is.
Somebody else has a different definition
of what friendship is. We all develop
these definitions of these principles based
on our experiences, our environment, the culture
we grow up in and things that we're exposed to.
There's no correct definition of friendship.
We all have slightly different definitions based
on what we've been through in life.
The same is true for the definition of self
there's no correct definition of ourselves.
We all just kind of make it up as we go
along. And so this fluidity of self is
actually just another psychological
mechanism that keep us stable in the world and stable
in our environment, the brain probably needed to
invent a concept of self or invent an ego
because an ego helps us function as a social species.
It helps us determine, are we treating each other fairly?
Is somebody taking advantage of me?
Am I being threatened by a group somehow?
If we didn't have an ego or if we didn't have
a sense of self, it would be almost impossible to
determine these things. And so in that sense,
the ego is just an evolutionary adaptation of our minds.
It's something that we just invented
at some point, and isn't even really real.
Level five, expert. (group of people chants)
There is no self. You do not exist.
And the belief that you exist. It's just
an illusion that is spun up by your mind.
And that is almost impossible to stop
for any long period of time. Nothing particularly
exists. It's all merely a unceasing interflow
of information change happening
at a subatomic atomic and biological level.
Trillions of bits get processed and spun into
patterns that generate this illusion that the self exists
that anything exists at all. You can train
yourself to see this, to feel this, to inhabit this.
You can train your mind to see through its processes
to start experiencing reality, not as the self or the ego,
but as yet, another manifestation
in this infinite sea of existence, all that you love
or care about is merely a temporary cessation
of this imagined separateness between things.
Life is transitory and ill defined.
There is no such thing as death. Nothing lasts yet,
nothing is lost. That is because all is present
and has always been you are this, and this, and this.
Be sure to like, and subscribe, fuckface.
(fast-paced rock music)